We all have our legacy sites and blogs that we love, and love to hate. If you have your first and only site or blog, are burning out, are tired of updating it, and need a break from writing the same things over and over; then you’re about to have your first love hate relationship with your legacy affiliate site or blog. You know it brings in revenue and you need to keep updating it for your readers and the search engines, but it has also become a huge pain in the butt. Instead of enjoying working on it you have grown to hate it, it has become a chore and you could not possibly look at it anymore and smile. Here are a few ways that I help to kill off the boredom and hatred for my old Affiliate sites while keeping them fresh, earning new streams of revenue and keeping myself in love with working on them.
Create seasonal affiliate sites to keep you energized and increase your affiliate revenue.
The first thing I do is think about what I love right now that could be seasonal. Seasonal sites are great because you work on them twice a year so they are always fresh and usually fun. You work on the SEO 6 months before the season and then you update during the season to grow the following. Since the fall holidays are coming up, I might start a thanksgiving cooking site, a fall foods site or something else. By having this site I can give myself a break from my legacy site, start building something new that will keep my attention and make me happy, as well as use the traffic it gets to drive into the legacy site where I make money. You have to remember that there is basically only one large season where people are searching for how to cook a turkey or pumpkin recipes, so after the season ends your traffic will end or die off for most of the year. This distraction can lead to seasonal traffic and revenue, but more importantly, give you a site to look forward to working on each year and give you a break from the legacy site that takes the fun out of working for yourself. Now that you have one seasonal site, look at the next quarter, what is interesting to you and what can you create?
One thing to think about is that after Q4, people are looking for ideas on setting up spring flowers, displays, parties, they are getting started on wedding planning, B2B markets are huge since everyone has budgets and extra cash, etc… Think about what is big in this time period and begin building out another url. It can be crafts to recycle wrapping paper or even investing your Q4 funds into new resources to increase business like additional labor, tools for productivity or equipment. Now you have a new project that can help keep you energized and find a way to tie it into your legacy site as well. By having something interesting to write about on your new niche seasonal site, you may also be able to brainstorm new articles to help generate new content for your legacy site making it fun to update.
Start a new social strategy for your affiliate sites
One thing that is always scary is entering into a new strategy or site that you haven’t tried. A while ago I started with Pinterest. It wasn’t until I burned out on my hobby, fun and niche sites that I needed something new to do. I had seen everyone talking about Pinterest so I joined and set up a few pin boards for my niche sites with accounts dedicated to each individual site. (The adamriemer.me one is personal likes and loves). I eventually abandoned it because I didn’t see a point. Much like Twitter, it eventually clicked with me about a year later and I instantly went back to it. When I went back I had a ton of new ideas and that’s how I created my Pinterest marketing strategies.
I went back to my old legacy affiliate sites and dug through the different sections. I then created a bunch of boards that were interesting and relevant. From there I pinned my own sites, other sites and other people’s pins. Eventually the niche Pinterest accounts started to get repins and they started sending new traffic and some sales through the sites. By giving in and trying new things I was able to get myself excited about my old sites and fall in love with posts I had written almost a decade ago and began discovering products and ideas I had forgotten about. Think about what channels you haven’t tried and figure out a strategy or way to use them. This can not only help you to come up with new ideas for the site that may be fun, but it can help you to fall in love with your old affiliate sites again and can hopefully bring in more traffic and sales.
Read old posts to generate new ideas for your affiliate sites
One of the last things I do is try to figure out a new niche or market within the site’s category that I haven’t written about yet. By going back and reading old posts from when I started the site, I not only laugh at what it started out as, and how bad the posts are, but I can usually come up with new ideas for verticals I haven’t added to it. If the site is all about widgets and I already did how to use the widgets, ideas to improve the widgets and comparing the widgets, I may realize I never went specific like blue widgets, or widgets for a specific user group or level of experience. By finding these new verticals within the same category I can build a new section, have a new SEO project and further take over that specific niche.
Helping to get energized and excited about your old legacy sites can be really hard to do. Sometimes you need to take a break and start seasonal sites to break up your day. Other times you need to look at new channels that let you think of other things and drive new traffic in. If none of those work, go back to your original site and look at what it started out as. By doing this you can find new verticals and markets to market to and also help to get excited about working on your old affiliate sites again.
